Because it has been said a thousand times on this and every game programming forum:

An MMORPG is the most difficult and engineering intensive type of game you could ever possibly make. And if you don't even know what technology to use... that's a big LOL.

To actually answer you - yes, you'll use mysql to store most of the data. But if you want it to scale at all you're going to need to figure out how to shard it across lots of servers, use some kind of caching for faster access to frequently accessed data, decide how you're going to update character position and the like without throttling your database, and more. OOOOH boy it's so much fun.

As far as I understand you need something like this:- A client in some kind of application programming language (ex Java)- A server in some kind of application programming language (ex Java) for storing temporary data, returning information quickly enough, etc. and doing DB access and all that- Potentially a web server of some kind (ex Rails, PHP) to handle some of the longer term state stuff that you can make web requests for- MySQL running for long-term storage- Memcached or something like that running for frequently accessed values- A lot of know-how- Not being you

Let's say theoreticly that i have an RPG game. and I need to make that game MMORPG multi-player. All I want is for a few players (four at most) to play online and be able to see each other's avatars walking around. (Once I've got that working I'll maybe think about letting the players interact with each other.)

I wouldn't say that's true. It's more like this that you shouldn't do:

"Hey guys, I am new to game development. How can I make an MMORPG?"

heX's question was a bit better than that, granted, but it was almost precisely the same. If I saw a question like this I wouldn't give a big LOL back:

"I've decided to start work on an MMORPG. I think I'm going to use a component-based entity system for the main game so I can get easier variety in behavior, and I will probably use Java for the backend as well. I was thinking of course that I'd use MySQL for the database, but I'm worried about the speed of the calls when I have a lot of players accessing the DB at once. How do larger projects typically handle this? Do I just need a faster server or is there something else I can do?"

Obviously that's a totally contrived question. The huge difference between the two is that one says "I have no idea what I'm doing or where to start. How can I make an MMORPG?" The other says "I've got a good idea of how to make my MMORPG, but I have a question about this part of the implementation."

It's like the difference between saying "How can I build a car?" and "How can I change my oil?"

I do wonder what it is about MMORPGs that make them such newbie-bait. "How can I make a game like World of Warcraft?" seems to be quite a common question. But never "How can I make a game like Gran Turismo?" or "How can I make a game like Resident Evil?".

by the way, hex, next time try to post your question with meaningul subject lines if you really want to get help (not that in this particular case would help much). I refused to click this post until today because of this subject : "help!" . Imagine if every topic seeking for advice was entitled "help !" , "advice" , "help please" , "question ...".

I don't want to be harsh with you but I agree with Eli. Start by something more simple. Maybe one day you will be able to create an RPG. Maybe some years later you will be able to create an MMORPG. But now writing a clone of Tetris or something like that is more realistic for you.

I'd rather be mean and really drive him to hesitate on starting an MMO than be all nice and keep him going on a "bad" path.

But. I will admit that my big LOL wasn't constructive in any way whatsoever, and was belittling and mean. Sorry about that, heX.

I am only just now thinking of maybe working on an MMO of some sort, and I've got like 14 years of game dev experience and 4 years doing it for my profession. And I'll still come up against all sorts of issues and it'll still be really difficult. So just be very wary, and definitely make something a lot simpler if you are at all okay with that.

I agree that the big LOL was a bit mean, but it seems hex is mature enough to deal with it and understand what we wanted to tell him . I'm sure his next topics will be more pondered and he'll receive pondered responses .

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